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Friday, July 10, 2015

Math education- Jo Boaler/ students writing/ Alfie Kohn and Yong Zhao, John Hattie and lots more for the creative teacher.

This article by former Queensland Director of
Primary Education Phil Cullen should be a must read for all primary teachers
all over.

“Justice for kids isnot on anyone’sagenda. “We ‘Care For Kids’” is expressed more often with tongue in cheek.Expressions about children’s learning has been replaced by plenty of talk about about test
results;and it hurts asyou wonder if the kind of former
great people who once ran our schools, have been replaced by others, who,
wonderful people though they are, seem to have lost the plot and now work hard
for a sad purpose.It hurts because one believes in
the enormous dignity and importance of primary schooling and there are now too
many operatives who don’t seem to care.”

“…much
of our education systems are fractal in nature. Education is delivered
recursively, where students are required to reproduce knowledge that is already
known. It's a safe approach to education, and learning can be easily measured.
Those that become teachers continue this tradition, teaching their own students
the same knowledge, in more or less the same style they were themselves taught.
Assessment of learning also has fractal features. Standardised testing is based
on reproducing knowledge.”

This is an inevitable outcome of teaching by
standards; equating to paint by numbers “art.”

How is writing assessed?

‘If
you look at the national curriculum descriptions, they are picking up on
something that happens to children’s writing as it
develops –
vocabulary becomes more complex, and sentence structure
becomes more complex, so in that sense there is nothing necessarily wrong with
what they’re saying. The problem comes
when you try to turn that into a marking scheme, which says you get more marks
for an unusual word than a usual word, or a sentence with a subclause rather
than one without.”’

“The
very essence of writing is that it is an expressive and personal outlet, so
should we really be limiting it at all? Some argue that a child’s creativity is stimulated by the exploration of advanced
vocabulary, but there really is a difference in being allowed to delve into the
world of fancy words, and being forced to use them.”

“My
growing doubts about rubrics in particular were prompted by the assumptions on
which this technique rested and also the criteria by which they (and assessment
itself) were typically judged.These doubts were stoked not only by
murmurs of dissent I heard from thoughtful educators but by the case madeforthis technique by its enthusiastic proponents.For example, I read in one article that “rubrics
make assessing student work quick and efficient, and they help teachers to
justify to parents and others the grades that they assign to students.” To
which the only appropriate response is:Uh-oh.”

“The
lessons from Asian education systems do not relate to what helped them achieve
their high scores on international comparative tests, but to the efforts they
have engaged in over the past few decades to transform their educational
practices. These efforts are often mistaken for policies and practices designed
to produce the high academic performances indicated by international tests,
while in reality they are intended to create a different kind of education, an
education deemed necessary for cultivating citizens in the twenty-first
century.”

Old school or new? Math teachers debate
best methods as Canadian scores fall

Old way or new way?If maths scores are
falling what's the answer?

“Don’t get math teachers started on
best teaching practices.The discussions are emotional, heated and they don’t agree on much – except that Canadian kids are falling
behind their peers in other countries, and there’s no clear solution.There are generally two camps: those in favour
of the old-school method to lecture kids with a “drill-and-kill” format
that preaches practice, and another, ever-growing group that believes a more
creative approach is needed to engage students.”

If there is one subject badly taught it is
maths!!! Jo Boaler - teaching maths in an active way is the answer

“I have spent years conducting research on students who study
mathematics through different teaching approaches—in
England and in the U.S.All of my research studies have shown
that when mathematics is opened up and broader math is taught—math
that includes problem solving, reasoning, representing ideas in multiple forms,
and question asking—students perform at higher levels.”

Making mistakes in maths in style – growth
mindsets count! More from Jo Boaler.

“Boaler notes that at least a small part of the forebrain called the
thalamus can appreciably grow after periods of the sort of cognitive
stimulation involved in mistake-making. What matters for improving performance
is that a person is challenged, which requires a mindset that is receptive to
being challenged—if not actively seeking out challenge and
failure. And that may be the most important thing a teacher can impart.”

“How do we respond to students who don’t want to come to school?I’ve seen many different responses to such a question. “It’s the parents’ fault,” “The child
just doesn’t want to learn,” “There
is a personality conflict with the teacher,” “Kids in the
class are mean”.Excuses don’t help the child want to come back to school.In fact, it makes it harder.Instead
we should think of what we are currently doing that is not working.”

“Learning is
about relationships. Relationships with content and with people who help us
acquire it. It is about having mind changing experiences that tap into our
desire to make meaning and express what we know.To be attracted to an area of
learning relates to what attracts our attention and whether or not we want to
put in the energy in to learn more. Curiosity is at the basis of all learning.”

“Developing a
'personalised learning' approach, tailoring learning to the needs of each
students ( as against the 'one size fits all'), is not as easy as it sounds. In
the real world, outside of school, people make use of whatever ways of learning
that do the job. For many such people academic school learning is of little use
to them.It does seem their are four learning styles available
for teachers to make use of in their classrooms to cater for all students.”

The killing of
creativity by John Hattie and similar educational technocrats and accountants.

Anti creativity ?

“Just becauseJohn Hattie has amalgamated every piece of 'school effectiveness'
research available ( mainly it seems from the USA) his findings seems to be
taken for read. The opposite ought to be the case - we need to be very wary of
such so called 'meta research.'. More worrying however is that the approaches
he is peddling is pushing into the background the home grown innovative
creative learning centred philosophy that was once an important element in many
classrooms.”

“If we want to develop 21st C education
systems then we will have no choice but to re-imagine education dramatically.We need to implement some heretical alternative thoughts to transform

It's not easy being a heretic

current
systems with their genesis in an industrial age an age well past its use by
date. Strangely enough none of the idea being considered are new it is just
that few school have put them all together. School are inherently conservative
and some schools seem impervious to change. Those that transform themselves
will be leading the way; the others will remain, like dinosaurs, relics of past
thinking. Increasingly students, with access to powerful information technology
will simply bi-pass schools that do not have the capability to transform
themselves.”